The Last Waltz? The Democratic Debate in Cleveland

Wrapup: This was a debate of several strong, sharp moments that may not have added up to a game-changer for Mrs. Clinton but it gave her a chance to get back to basics — health care, fighter, woman — and to express regret (again) for her vote for the war in Iraq.

But that was after one of her weakest openings, in which she made peevish remarks about her treatment during these debates. Her campaign believes that the media has given her a tougher time while going easier on Mr. Obama, and Mr. Russert certainly pressed her tonight in a way that he did not press Mr. Obama. But her specific complaint was about having questions directed to her first, although she did not explain that this gives Mr. Obama an advantage — time to mull his answer or simply agree with her. And it seemed bizarre to point to “Saturday Night Live” to validate her campaign’s view that she is ill-treated by the press.

One of the more revealing bits — and a new subject to these debates — was over Minister Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement of Mr. Obama.

Asked if he rejected that support, Mr. Obama joked that he couldn’t really say that to someone who “thinks I’m a good guy,” but added, “I have been very clear in my denunciations of him.” Mrs. Clinton then said she had rejected the support of an anti-semitic party in New York and that it had been “important to stand on principle.” “There’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting,” she said. Whereupon Mr. Obama said he didn’t see a big difference but, “I’m happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.”

The exchange showed both of them in a strong light — she spotted an opening, portrayed her own heroics and pushed him to her side, while he showed flexibility and good judgment in quickly agreeing with her and defusing the issue.

So, there were lots of interesting exchanges, but the bottom line, for those who may just be tuning in, is that Mrs. Clinton is still in the race. But was this their last debate? Tune back in on Tuesday after the votes come in from Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island.10:37 p.m. | Worthy? The candidates are asked, is there a fundamental question your opponent has to answer about his or her worthiness to be the nominee?

“She would be worthy as a nominee,” he says. But, he says, “I can bring this country together in a unique way,” and that’s what we need to deliver on the issues we both care about. He says he has “a unique bias in favor of opening up government” and pushing back against special interests.

Mrs. Clinton tries to co-opt the “change” message here. She says being the first woman would be a “sea change” in the country and “give enormous hope to the way things have been done and who gets to do them.” She goes on to say, “The question I’ve been posing is who can actually change the country.” Her experience, she says, gives her an understanding and insight into how best to make “the changes” we know we have to seek.

10:29 p.m. | Running Out the Clock: Mr. Obama says they have gone through 20 debates and “there is still a lot of fight going on in this contest.” He takes a page from her playbook at the last debate and praises her. “Senator Clinton has campaigned magnificently,” he says. “She is an outstanding public servant and I’m very proud to have campaigned with her.” (No handshake, no standing ovation.)

10:17 p.m. | You Say Reject, I Say Denounce: Mr. Obama is asked how he feels about Louis Farrakhan supporting him. Mr. Russert then asks if he does not reject support of people like Louis Farrakhan, can he assure Jews that he is consistent regarding issues involving Israel? “I have been a stalwart friend of Israel’s,” he says. “Their security is sacrosanct.”

Mrs. Clinton notes that when the Independence party in New York wanted to endorse her she rejected its support because they were anti-Semitic. Mr. Obama comes back to say that he’s had no formal offer of help from Mr. Farrakhan, but if he did he would reject that: “If the word ‘reject’ Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word ‘denounce,’ then I’m happy to concede the point, and I would reject and denounce.”

10:09 p.m. | Taxes: Mrs. Clinton is asked why she does not release her tax returns to the public? She says she will release them when she becomes the nominee “or even earlier.” She says the public has 20 years of records from her. Asked if she would release them before Tuesday’s primary, she says she “can’t get it together by then,” she’s a little busy right now, but will “work toward releasing” her tax returns.

Asked whether she would release the archives of her years as first lady, she says, “Absolutely.” She says she has urged that the process “be as quick as possible.”

10 p.m. | Let’s Go to the Videotape: Now the video of Mr. Obama: He says during a speech that Mrs. Clinton selectively takes credit for the good things that came out of the Clinton presidency while disassociating herself from things she didn’t like. Mr. Obama says that he stands by his statement: “I think what is absolutely true is, is that when Senator Clinton continually talks about her experience, she is including the eight years that she served as first lady,” but he adds that it is unfair to say now, “behind the scenes, I was disagreeing” with things like Nafta.

He refers back to the bankruptcy bill and brings up one of Mrs. Clinton’s debate blunders, when she said she voted for it but was glad it didn’t pass. “As a general rule,” he says dryly, that approach doesn’t work. On health care, he says, he objects to the way she approached it in 1993: she thought all she had to do was fight, he says, and she ended up fighting not just the insurance companies but members of her own party.

9:55 p.m. | TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes: Whoops! MSNBC meant to bring up a video of Mr. Obama on the trail, but they showed one of Mrs. Clinton instead. It was that moment on Sunday when she was describing the Obama M.O.: “The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing.”

“Sounds good,” he says. He adds that she “showed some good humor” and he would give her points for delivery.

She uses her response time to talk about health care and says special interests are not going to give up without a fight and says she is a fighter. One example she cites is a provision in the bankruptcy bill, which is odd since her record on that is mixed.

9:47 p.m. | Iraq: If the United States pulls out of Iraq but Iraq then goes to hell, do you reserve the right as president to re-invade it? Mrs. Clinton says Mr. Russert asks a lot of hypothetical questions, then says it’s in our interests to have an orderly withdrawal. Mr. Obama says he always reserves the right for the president to look out for American interests. Mrs. Clinton tries to add something, but Brian Williams says television doesn’t stop and we have to go to break.

Both candidates are fully engaged. So far, Mrs. Clinton is aggressive and sharp, although citing Saturday Night Live as a source was not a high point.

9:40 p.m. | Foreign Policy: Mr. Obama is asked if it was unfair for Mrs. Clinton to call him, basically, a lightweight on foreign policy. He says “she equates experience with longevity in Washington.” On the issues that matter, he says, his judgment has been sound and superior to Mrs. Clinton’s and Senator John McCain’s. Mrs. Clinton says that since Mr. Obama came to the Senate, they have voted exactly the same on the issue of Iraq. And last summer, she says, “he basically threatened to bomb Pakistan.”

Mr. Obama dismisses the notion that his opposition to Iraq was just a speech and calls the decision to go to Iraq a “big strategic blunder.”

And he says that while she boasts of being ready on Day One, she was actually ready to give in to George Bush on Day One, by voting for a resolution authorizing President Bush to take military action in Iraq.

Mr. Obama adds that on Pakistan, he had said that if we have actionable intelligence about Osama bin Laden, and Pakistan can’t strike against him, we should.

9:30 p.m. | More on Nafta: Moderator Tim Russert and Mrs. Clinton get into a dispute over her view of Nafta. He says that in 2004, she said that on balance, Nafta has been good for New York and good for America. Mrs. Clinton says she’ll renegotiate Nafta. And she’ll tell Mexico and Canada that we’ll be out unless we renegotiate it. She also says that lots of parts of New York and Texas have benefited from the trade agreement but places like Youngstown, Ohio have not. Mr. Russert asks if she would opt out within six months of becoming president.

“We’ll opt out unless we renegotiate,” she says, and she is certain that given that option, Mexico and Canada would renegotiate.

As for Mr. Obama, he says he too would make sure we renegotiate the treaty and that Mrs. Clinton is right. (She’s also right that it seems as if she often has to answer debate questions before he does, but that may not be a winning argument with voters.)

Mr. Russert notes that Mrs. Clinton has pledged to create 5 million new jobs over 10 years. When she was running for her Senate seat in 2000, Mr. Russert says, she pledged to create 200,000 new jobs in New York, but there’s been a net loss of 30,000 new jobs. Mrs. Clinton says she thought Al Gore was going to be president and she was counting on a Democratic president who would have helped her keep that pledge.

9:20 p.m. | Paging Amy Poehler: Texas likes the North American Free Trade Agreement, but Ohio does not. Who’s right? In response to that question, Mrs. Clinton takes the opportunity to note that she is always asked questions first. Not complaining, she says, but she finds it curious.

Then she points to “Saturday Night Live,” which last weekend mocked how the media cover Mr. Obama: “Can I just point out that in the last several debates, I seem to get the first question all the time. And I don’t mind. I — you know, I’ll be happy to field them, but I do find it curious, and if anybody saw ‘Saturday Night Live,’ you know, maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow.”

9:18 p.m | Health Care The two candidates are quickly trying to make this argument not about fliers but about their differences over health care. She said his plan reads “almost as if the health insurance companies and the Republicans wrote it.” Mr. Obama is still slightly defensive about his plan but points out that it’s still not clear how she intends to enforce a mandate for universal coverage. She says his plan also has a mandate, of requiring parents to buy insurance for their children.

9:08 p.m. | True or False? Off the bat, MSNBC airs two, contradictory images of Mrs. Clinton: First, they show her saying humbly at the end of the last debate that she was “honored” to be on the stage with Mr. Obama. Then, they show the “Shame on you, Barack Obama,” clip from the weekend where Mrs. Clinton blasted Mr. Obama for sending fliers to Ohio voters that she called misleading and false.

Mrs. Clinton is asked to explain the disparate images. She said his fliers were “very disturbing to me” and said it was “important to stand up for yourself.” She says Obama’s mailings look like they were written by Republicans and the health insurance companies.

And what about that picture of Mr. Obama? Did it come from her campaign? “So far as I know, it did not,” she said. Mr. Obama says, “I take Senator Clinton at her word that she knew nothing about the photo.” But he also says that her campaign has constantly sent out negative or inaccurate information about him, including the claim that he just hasn’t “whined” about it.

Debate preparations at Cleveland State University, where Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton will face off in the final debate before the March 4 primaries. (Photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

9 p.m. | Taking the Stage: Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama have taken the stage for the grip and grin with local officials. They have not acknowledged each other yet. They’re taking their seats, having some water. The debate table is a big shiny black oval. During the previous debates featuring just Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton has been seated to the right of Mr. Obama. Tonight, they’ve switched.

8:16 p.m. | Pre-Game Warm Up: The last Democratic debate before next Tuesday’s vote in Ohio and Texas — and perhaps the last of the primary season — starts at 9 p.m. tonight on MSNBC. Brian Williams and Tim Russert will be at the moderators’ desk.

The big question, of course, is what strategy Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will employ against Senator Barack Obama. There are as many theories as there are theorists, as much advice as there are advisers. Mrs. Clinton may not even be totally sure herself of how hot, how cool, how warm to be until the moment presents itself.

What we do know is that the pre-debate psych ops are getting pretty heavy. The polls are going against her, the demographics are going against her, more and more superdelegates are declaring their intentions to support for Mr. Obama. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a long-time Clinton ally, endorsed Mr. Obama today with a kind of writing-on-the-wall heaviness of heart.

He said that experience — Mrs. Clinton’s calling card — is not the only thing that matters this year. “It’s maturity, it’s judgment, it’s balance, it’s the ability to speak in a way that touches people,” Mr. Dodd said.

This will be the 20th Democratic debate and Mrs. Clinton’s job has changed massively over the course of them. She started out last spring needing to show she was tough enough to be commander-in-chief. Now, with 37 states having voted, and Mr. Obama having won 24 of them, her imperative is much bigger: to reverse the tide.

While you are waiting for the debate to begin, check out this story about a man and his brother-in-law who came to blows after watching the last debate.

Here’s the key quote, courtesy of the Philadelphia Daily News: “I said, ‘Obama is winning this thing!’ and my brother-in-law says, ‘He can’t win, be realistic.’ I said, ‘Let’s see how realistic you are when he wins.’ That was it. He just went after me.”

The more I watch this Rove like media promotion of Obama the more I now understand why one has to vote for Nader. On the eve of the Ohio Texas Election the gladiator Oprahama is going to stage a world classroom touting her notion of positive thinking. This insane cult that voted in Schwarzenegger so quickly is now about to vote in a rookie. I am now very scared that it has to get that much worse before people understand what is happening to this world. This is scarier that the Bush elections as this cult don’t know that it is a cult when the evangelists knew they were. It is clear that the unconscious, unhistorical and unthinking left Hollywood is as dangerous as the fundamentalists as they are too because they only love idol images, or more so because they do not know what they create. NBC daily promotes this gladiator culture as they house the worst of unreflexive affect makers and are the forefront of the media abuse of all other candidates but their current boy wonder with no wonder.

The tide has indeed turned. In one year Sen. Obama has steered his campaign from being one of a slate of “also rans” to becoming a(n) historical inevitability. Sen. Clinton’s sheer inability to oversee her own campaign should give the remaining voters a great deal of pause before chosing her to manage the country. We are on the brink of recession, mired in war and deep in personal debt. Sen. Obama has proved to be a good leader by displaying qualities of steady character and level headed answers to questions. His campaign has great leadership at every level from the door to door canvas organizers to the top level advisors. He will indeed make a great president. Sen. Clinton has been sadly ill advised. Someone should have told her in the beginning that “it’s not over ’til it’s over.” Well, it’s over for her.

Oh, that’s just nonsense, yellow – I am sick and tired of this shrill “experience” mantra.

Let’s be clear – MOST presidents do not have direct foreign policy experience when elected. Neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush had any. Is Hillary implying that Bill wasn’t ready, and that his election was a mistake on behalf of the electorate.

Come on people – Presidents surround themselves with experienced advisors – and the new President will do the same. What matters is judgement, character, and the ability to pull people together.

Hillary would be an incredibly divisive leader, and take our country further down the path of rancor, spite and hate. Obama will take us toward intelligent discourse, realistic compromise, and progress on the many challenges facing us.

Let’s hope Hillary Clinton has the integrity to withdraw tonight during the debate. I am no fan of Barack Obama; I am no fan of any politician. (Why? They are shills for corporations and indeed the whole of industrial capitalism, which is ruining life and lifeways across the planet.)

But like it or not, they are our masters (or at least the public face of them), and their rhetoric and actions influence and reflect on us as human beings who live in the USA. There is no place for the race-baiting the Clinton campaign has engaged in. Their sending the photograph of Obama to Matt Drudge is the last straw.

She needs not only to withdraw, but also to repudiate the actions of her campaign. She needs to do it NOW.

I can no longer stomach the woman bashing and Obama can do no wrong bull out there. If it is Obama, I am leaving the democratic party after being an activist in the party for years and who is at the moment an alternate delagate on the state level. I may vote for Nader, but that isn’t likely either.

I have never heard Obama admit he made a mistake. Perhaps he will after his name is mentioned in Resko’s federal fraud trial this week

Yellow purple, I have no idea what you are trying to say. But you’re trying! Can we get to the point? Vote for either of these bums, and you’re not a true American. We don’t need these type of people in the White House.

Won’t be able to watch what I expect will be the last Democratic debate in a historic year. Hope both stick to issues and continue to emphasize, as they have been doing a lot recently, that at the end of the day they have far more in common than different, and what matters most now is electing a Democratic president, not whether it’s Obama or Clinton.

I truly believe that both Senators Clinton and Obama are good people who want to do what’s best for this country. What I feel is unfortunate is the Clinton campaign machine, which has really lowered the tone of this race. It’s ironic because she wants everyone to focus on the issues, and the more she attacks Obama the more the “bickering” takes center stage in the media. She really has mismanaged this campaign, and that should say something about her leadership abilities.

It is “insane” and “unthinking” to judge any candidate by their least informed, most shallow, or most blindly zealous supporters. There are far too many people saying “these Obama supporters” or “these Hillary supporters” have made me decide this or that.

There are extremely well-informed, serious thinkers who have assessed the candidates on their merits who endorse Obama, Clinton and McCain. They don’t make it into the media as often as Oprah (Obama), Chuck Norris (Huckabee), Sylvester Stallone (McCain) or Ellen Degeneres (Clinton).

Whatever you think of Senator Obama personally, there are thousands of educated voters who endorse him on the basis of his platform, his diverse professional background, and his unique personal experiences and perspective on Washington.

I voted for Obama, but I will happily vote for Clinton in the general.

Any Democrat who accuses supporters of a candidate of being “duped” or “unthinking” will prove herself duped, thoughtless and irrational should she abandon her party out of bitterness or a desire for payback.

The only people who will destroy the Democratic party are not the candidates, but the overzealous, fiercely competitive supporters who are sore losers.

President Obama drew criticism on Thursday when he said, “we don’t have a strategy yet,” for military action against ISIS in Syria. Lawmakers will weigh in on Mr. Obama’s comments on the Sunday shows.Read more…